In September, 1951, 17-month-old Mark Bennet of Vancouver, B.C., was stung 447 times by wasps and lived. He was released from the hospital after twenty days of treatment.
In the New York City area alone, there are 15,000 insect species.
The fastest insect on record, that has been reliably measured, is the Australian dragon fly – which has a top speed of around 57 km/h. Contrary to popular myth, the deer botfly CANNOT fly faster than a jet plane. It would be crushed by the pressure.
The female salamander inseminates herself. At mating time, the male deposits a conical mass of jellylike substance containing the sperm. The female draws the jelly into herself, and in so doing fertilizes her eggs.
The females of many species of moths are wingless. To compensate for this, their bodies are always larger and heavier than those of their male counterparts.
The hardiest of all the world's insects is the mosquito. It has been found in the coldest regions of northern Canada and Siberia, and can live quite comfortably at the North Pole. It is equally at home in equatorial jungles.
The honey ant of the desert has an unusual method of providing food in times of scarcity. Certain members of the colony are stuffed with liquid food or water until the rear of their bodies are enlarged to the size of a pea. When a famine occurs, these ants disgorge their supplies to feed the others.
The honeybee kills more people each year world-wide than venomous snakes.
The Japanese beetle, found in the eastern United States and Canada, is the only bug in these countries to be concerned about if lodged in the ear, for it can chew through the eardrum in a matter of minutes. Other bugs can be removed without the same urgency.
The leaf-cutter ant sometimes makes anthills 16 feet deep and up to an acre wide
The leaf-cutting ant can lift more than 50 times its own weight.
The life cycle of the chigger is about 50 to 70 days, with adult females living up to one year and producing their offspring during this time.
Insects consume 10 percent of the world's food supply every year.
It takes 110 domestic silkworm cocoons to make a man's tie.
It would take 27,000 spiders, each spinning a single web, to produce a pound of web.
It's been documented that locusts have formed swarms measuring up to one mile wide, 100 feet deep, and 50 miles long. They may travel more than 2,000 miles. A swarm this enormous has been known to contain as many as 40 billion locusts.
Lady beetles, often called ladybugs or coccinellids, are the most commonly known of all beneficial insects. In Europe, these beetles are called "ladybirds." Ohio residents like lady beetles so much that the Convergent Lady Beetle became the official state insect in 1975.
Louis Pasteur saved France's silkworm industry. When the industry in southern France was dealt a staggering blow by a disease that was killing the silkworms, the call for help went out for Pasteur — no one but Pasteur. Pasteur's solution on locating a tiny parasite infecting silkworms and the mulberry leaves that were fed to them, was drastic but rational: Destroy all infested worms and infected food. It was done. It worked. The silk industry was saved.
Many insects hear with their hair. A number of insects, such as the male mosquito, have thousands of tiny hairs growing along their antennae.
Many species of butterflies, like birds, fly south for the winter.
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